I generally enjoy your bonus tracks though I am, apparently, too dim to understand what bonus means in this particular context. Bonus money at work is not the usual money that shows up in my bank account each month, but special, extra money that I don’t tell my wife about. Arbys, on occasion, slings an extra roast beast my way without confiscating additional ducats from me for their trouble. That is bonus meat of which I am keenly aware, and terribly ashamed. But, a bonus track on a set list of one, I don’t get. Is your article the other track? Is my dial up internet failing to download the other songs? Anyhoo, while I don’t understand the title, I dig (more accurately, share) your taste in music and enjoy the inclusion of these songs in your weekly articles. All of this I mention because as generous as you have been in supplying your readers with bonus tracks, I thought perhaps you might like one curated just for you. Behold, my take on the lone track bonus track:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI. I selected this particular video because I believe it does a reasonable job of capturing the sentiment of people like myself when we encounter people such as yourself and the subject of DJT-Q (that Q could mean “Q” and it could mean “Questioning whether I’m really down to clown with Q”; hard to say at this point) inevitably comes up. As you might have guessed, I am Iverson in this video and you are the nameless/faceless off-camera, practice enthusiast reporter. Just as Allen goes to some length to concede that practice is no laughing matter, I’m here to tell you that I am embarrassed/disgusted by many of the things that Trump has done/continues to do. Having said that, while practice is important, there is currently an actual game of, in my mind, greater significance being played extremely poorly (or adeptly, depending on who you ask) by a gentleman who only seldom darkens the Slack Tide doorway; Mr. Joe Biden. It is incredibly interesting to me that on an empirical, data-driven level, almost no one, is better off today than they were four years ago. Be the measure economics (see your 401k balance), foreign relations (see Vlad Putin) , immigration (see Martha’s Viñedo), public health (actually, scratch that one; I forgot the pandemic was recently declared over by Presidential fiat), we simply aren’t in better shape now than we were in, say 2019. Yet, that mathematical reality gets almost no play in the public arena. I know practice is important. I do. But, dammit man, so is this. Unrelated, but I really enjoyed last week’s effort. I should have made an effort to say so in the comments, but you know how it is. You bring the burrito with the wart-ring in it back to the restaurant (actually happened to me) and you eat the non biohazard ones quietly.
Ahhh . . . What a walk down memory lane. I am disappointed that Field Marshall Cinque of the late Symbionese Liberation Army didn't make the cut. Interestingly, Bobby Seale ran for Congress in Oakland, unsuccessfully. Rep Bobby Rush did make it to the House. (That was after the authorities stopped trying to kill the Black Panthers.)
A key difference may lie in the difference between those icons of the revolution from years past and the current group. Oh, the leaders now are equally passionate and committed. (I mean, membership in the Proud Boys demands you be pummelled while saying the name of five cereals, thereby demonstrating your ability to withstand adversity and maintain composure. I am going to start a group called Moms in Labor. You will have to scream five obscenities while making lunches for three different people with various complicated preferences. Almost everyone will get in.)
The difference is the people in the institutions are just holding their fingers in the wind. They'll fold like cheap tents if the wannabee Taliban-beardos fade away.
The next generation of election deniers who are beginning to populate the election process are a different problem. They will use the sliver of power they may acquire to throw out votes they don't like. That is what the Civil War will look like now.
Unless we legalize the possession of weed and we all can collapse on a musty couch and pass it around. Agreed on McConnell. He'd get it and would forget he was bogarting it.
I have to ask. Are you, or have you ever been a writer for comedic entertainment? That's a compliment by the way. I find you very witty...and myself green with jealousy.
No background in comedic writing. My wit was honed in the white-hot crucible of the teenage male eyeroll. Proud Boys?! My sons were the Embarrassed Boys, a far more subversive cabal of schemers. Not political, of course. Just eager to defang their mother in a battle of wits, a struggle they always came to half-armed.
I am unworthy of your kind words but thank you for the thought. You got me on a good day.
It's the public's response to altering the Electoral process that may be a catylist for the cray cray. I seem to remember my 8th grade history. Lexington-Concord...one shot. But cut slack here...that was over 50 years ago...the class, not the incident.
Your mention of the SLA reminds me of a song by Camper Van Beethoven called “Tania.” Maybe my favorite line: “How I long to see your face photographed in 15 second intervals.” Only we old timers will get that. Check it out if you’ve never heard it
Collectively we are all to blame for this madness. All we see and hear are sound bytes and snippets from these mouth breathers and we believe it is true. We search for the "truth" on the net that is slanted towards the madness. Civil war may be the only way to stop the madness.
you write an article early in the day and the new york attorney general comes down hard on mr chin
up, witch hunt, no where to hide, ex president trump before nightfall.
if there is one thing that can be said for trump he will pee into the wind and doesn't give a damn that the blow back is all over him. the opposite of what a normal person would do and you can be sure it's
Donald shaking his fist at the greatest injustice ever conceived.
All of us wives and lovers take the burdens of civic security seriously. No thanks necessary. It's our way of contributing to life, liberty and the American Way.
And thank God for y’all. I have confessed a few times to people that: the women seem to do this better than we do…why don’t we give them the reigns for a while?
Not to be nit picky...but aren’t all politicians narcissistic sociopaths? My husband read an interesting book that actually said all ceos are to degree narcissistic sociopaths. Not to excuse but to point out. The bitch is we’re all stuck trying to survive all their bullshit and preening...
"One previously unthinkable abomination after another is committed, each of distinct character, or lack of, and yet all still blurring together..."
Which is, of course, the point. Whether lies or abominations you have to pump them out at firehose volume and velocity. This serves two purposes. First, the time for outrage to build is truncated by the appearance of the next lie or abomination. Second, the sheer volume overwhelms the ethical mechanisms creating sort of a diminishing marginal utility of outrage. Said another way, the process is intended inure us to outrages, to normalize them and in the process make them less outrageous, less abnormal, less disgusting.
Another excellent essay topped off with another excellent tune. Thank you as always, Matt.
I found it sort of ironic that immediately after the 'Dixieland' video ended, I was greeted by a campaign video from Trump remora Lauren Boebert shamelessly (brainlessly?) stoking our divisions (I live in SW Colorado).
This is the reality that I saw some 6 plus years ago. My staunchly conservative and republican friends assured me, "do not worry, he will never get the nomination." And here we are actually talking rationally about whether or not this endless yellow migraine and his Banana brained followers might drop a Watts riot version of a Civil War on us. How long do these folks think this will last? About as long as it takes their neighbors to phone in their coordinates to the Air Force Reaper Drone control centers, that's how long. Christmas!! Are you MAGA people just mad???? Well, sorry. Yes. Yes you are.
Am with you, Kim. Love me some Steve Earle too, and have for decades. In case you missed, I included some other songs from both him and his late son, Justin Townes, a few months ago. At the end of this piece:
Thanks Mark and Stephen. I actually outsource the writing, and just scout the music. So that simplifies things. Once my men Javier and Chulo get back from that Martha's Vineyard wild-goose-chase, I'm going to ask them to crank out 3,000 words on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
I still have a problem with inequities. A good friend's brother lives in Minneapolis; on the night of Floyd's death, and for a few nights thereafter, people were being marshaled (not congregating, being marshaled) in front of his house to riot. The brother's neighborhood was destroyed.. businesses, stores looted, burned. Some of them black-owned. A police precinct overrun and torched. Night after night of fires, sirens, people being beaten. Repercussions? Accountability? Culpability? Absolutely nothing/none! Justice for thee but not for me.
And Matt, I agree, some people here are absolutely berserk name-callers. It makes me angry and sad.
All those people should have gone to jail. But........the primary difference between that and say, January 6, was the president of the United States was leading the charge in the latter. A guy who is going to run again. And who keeps trying to overturn an election that he lost. Though there were plenty of Dem politicians in the Summer of 2020 riots who looked the other way and/or even chipped into the bail fund. And that was not a joke. Real people and real properties were destroyed by that madness Then they pretend that they like cops.. Well, you didn't when you were looking to defund them. Some definite hypocrisy there.
You are a hero, Stephen. And I am envious as I had three boys.
I’m guessing that your boys have acquitted themselves well.
I generally enjoy your bonus tracks though I am, apparently, too dim to understand what bonus means in this particular context. Bonus money at work is not the usual money that shows up in my bank account each month, but special, extra money that I don’t tell my wife about. Arbys, on occasion, slings an extra roast beast my way without confiscating additional ducats from me for their trouble. That is bonus meat of which I am keenly aware, and terribly ashamed. But, a bonus track on a set list of one, I don’t get. Is your article the other track? Is my dial up internet failing to download the other songs? Anyhoo, while I don’t understand the title, I dig (more accurately, share) your taste in music and enjoy the inclusion of these songs in your weekly articles. All of this I mention because as generous as you have been in supplying your readers with bonus tracks, I thought perhaps you might like one curated just for you. Behold, my take on the lone track bonus track:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI. I selected this particular video because I believe it does a reasonable job of capturing the sentiment of people like myself when we encounter people such as yourself and the subject of DJT-Q (that Q could mean “Q” and it could mean “Questioning whether I’m really down to clown with Q”; hard to say at this point) inevitably comes up. As you might have guessed, I am Iverson in this video and you are the nameless/faceless off-camera, practice enthusiast reporter. Just as Allen goes to some length to concede that practice is no laughing matter, I’m here to tell you that I am embarrassed/disgusted by many of the things that Trump has done/continues to do. Having said that, while practice is important, there is currently an actual game of, in my mind, greater significance being played extremely poorly (or adeptly, depending on who you ask) by a gentleman who only seldom darkens the Slack Tide doorway; Mr. Joe Biden. It is incredibly interesting to me that on an empirical, data-driven level, almost no one, is better off today than they were four years ago. Be the measure economics (see your 401k balance), foreign relations (see Vlad Putin) , immigration (see Martha’s Viñedo), public health (actually, scratch that one; I forgot the pandemic was recently declared over by Presidential fiat), we simply aren’t in better shape now than we were in, say 2019. Yet, that mathematical reality gets almost no play in the public arena. I know practice is important. I do. But, dammit man, so is this. Unrelated, but I really enjoyed last week’s effort. I should have made an effort to say so in the comments, but you know how it is. You bring the burrito with the wart-ring in it back to the restaurant (actually happened to me) and you eat the non biohazard ones quietly.
Please stop referring to Trump and the Trump Organization as "real estate developers"; they are merely grifters who dabble in real estate.
Ahhh . . . What a walk down memory lane. I am disappointed that Field Marshall Cinque of the late Symbionese Liberation Army didn't make the cut. Interestingly, Bobby Seale ran for Congress in Oakland, unsuccessfully. Rep Bobby Rush did make it to the House. (That was after the authorities stopped trying to kill the Black Panthers.)
A key difference may lie in the difference between those icons of the revolution from years past and the current group. Oh, the leaders now are equally passionate and committed. (I mean, membership in the Proud Boys demands you be pummelled while saying the name of five cereals, thereby demonstrating your ability to withstand adversity and maintain composure. I am going to start a group called Moms in Labor. You will have to scream five obscenities while making lunches for three different people with various complicated preferences. Almost everyone will get in.)
The difference is the people in the institutions are just holding their fingers in the wind. They'll fold like cheap tents if the wannabee Taliban-beardos fade away.
The next generation of election deniers who are beginning to populate the election process are a different problem. They will use the sliver of power they may acquire to throw out votes they don't like. That is what the Civil War will look like now.
Unless we legalize the possession of weed and we all can collapse on a musty couch and pass it around. Agreed on McConnell. He'd get it and would forget he was bogarting it.
I have to ask. Are you, or have you ever been a writer for comedic entertainment? That's a compliment by the way. I find you very witty...and myself green with jealousy.
No background in comedic writing. My wit was honed in the white-hot crucible of the teenage male eyeroll. Proud Boys?! My sons were the Embarrassed Boys, a far more subversive cabal of schemers. Not political, of course. Just eager to defang their mother in a battle of wits, a struggle they always came to half-armed.
I am unworthy of your kind words but thank you for the thought. You got me on a good day.
It's the public's response to altering the Electoral process that may be a catylist for the cray cray. I seem to remember my 8th grade history. Lexington-Concord...one shot. But cut slack here...that was over 50 years ago...the class, not the incident.
Your mention of the SLA reminds me of a song by Camper Van Beethoven called “Tania.” Maybe my favorite line: “How I long to see your face photographed in 15 second intervals.” Only we old timers will get that. Check it out if you’ve never heard it
I'm on it. Thanks for the heads-up.
Collectively we are all to blame for this madness. All we see and hear are sound bytes and snippets from these mouth breathers and we believe it is true. We search for the "truth" on the net that is slanted towards the madness. Civil war may be the only way to stop the madness.
you write an article early in the day and the new york attorney general comes down hard on mr chin
up, witch hunt, no where to hide, ex president trump before nightfall.
if there is one thing that can be said for trump he will pee into the wind and doesn't give a damn that the blow back is all over him. the opposite of what a normal person would do and you can be sure it's
Donald shaking his fist at the greatest injustice ever conceived.
All of us wives and lovers take the burdens of civic security seriously. No thanks necessary. It's our way of contributing to life, liberty and the American Way.
Strong men marry strong women and have strong daughters.
Well, my ex-wife and I brought three such young women into this world…so we’ve done our fair part….good kids, they’ll help make good things happen
Could not have said it better.
And thank God for y’all. I have confessed a few times to people that: the women seem to do this better than we do…why don’t we give them the reigns for a while?
Stephen, you are the coolest.
You are making me blush, but I’m enjoying it….
Not to be nit picky...but aren’t all politicians narcissistic sociopaths? My husband read an interesting book that actually said all ceos are to degree narcissistic sociopaths. Not to excuse but to point out. The bitch is we’re all stuck trying to survive all their bullshit and preening...
"One previously unthinkable abomination after another is committed, each of distinct character, or lack of, and yet all still blurring together..."
Which is, of course, the point. Whether lies or abominations you have to pump them out at firehose volume and velocity. This serves two purposes. First, the time for outrage to build is truncated by the appearance of the next lie or abomination. Second, the sheer volume overwhelms the ethical mechanisms creating sort of a diminishing marginal utility of outrage. Said another way, the process is intended inure us to outrages, to normalize them and in the process make them less outrageous, less abnormal, less disgusting.
Another excellent essay topped off with another excellent tune. Thank you as always, Matt.
I found it sort of ironic that immediately after the 'Dixieland' video ended, I was greeted by a campaign video from Trump remora Lauren Boebert shamelessly (brainlessly?) stoking our divisions (I live in SW Colorado).
I heard a comedian refer to her as Bimboebert. I kinda like that
God help you, John. She is.......a piece of work. You need more Steve Earle. And maybe a couple tumblers of whiskey, for forgetting's sake.
This is the reality that I saw some 6 plus years ago. My staunchly conservative and republican friends assured me, "do not worry, he will never get the nomination." And here we are actually talking rationally about whether or not this endless yellow migraine and his Banana brained followers might drop a Watts riot version of a Civil War on us. How long do these folks think this will last? About as long as it takes their neighbors to phone in their coordinates to the Air Force Reaper Drone control centers, that's how long. Christmas!! Are you MAGA people just mad???? Well, sorry. Yes. Yes you are.
Thanks for the shoutout to Steve Earle's "Dixieland"! One of my all-time favorite songs, and Steve Earle is one of my all-time favorite artists.
Am with you, Kim. Love me some Steve Earle too, and have for decades. In case you missed, I included some other songs from both him and his late son, Justin Townes, a few months ago. At the end of this piece:
https://mattlabash.substack.com/p/on-writing
I feel sad for the country when the clown currently in the Oval Office and the clown preceding him are the best we can do.
Samuel Morse said it best
“What hath god wrought “
Damn, Matt. You have great taste in music and you burrow deep in the archives. How do you find time to write?
Thanks Mark and Stephen. I actually outsource the writing, and just scout the music. So that simplifies things. Once my men Javier and Chulo get back from that Martha's Vineyard wild-goose-chase, I'm going to ask them to crank out 3,000 words on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
And Javier is like: dude, are you serious? Couldn’t I do a piece on snails, or something like that…..?
You know, I can’t figure out how he can rapid fire replies when he wants to…I’m jealous
I still have a problem with inequities. A good friend's brother lives in Minneapolis; on the night of Floyd's death, and for a few nights thereafter, people were being marshaled (not congregating, being marshaled) in front of his house to riot. The brother's neighborhood was destroyed.. businesses, stores looted, burned. Some of them black-owned. A police precinct overrun and torched. Night after night of fires, sirens, people being beaten. Repercussions? Accountability? Culpability? Absolutely nothing/none! Justice for thee but not for me.
And Matt, I agree, some people here are absolutely berserk name-callers. It makes me angry and sad.
All those people should have gone to jail. But........the primary difference between that and say, January 6, was the president of the United States was leading the charge in the latter. A guy who is going to run again. And who keeps trying to overturn an election that he lost. Though there were plenty of Dem politicians in the Summer of 2020 riots who looked the other way and/or even chipped into the bail fund. And that was not a joke. Real people and real properties were destroyed by that madness Then they pretend that they like cops.. Well, you didn't when you were looking to defund them. Some definite hypocrisy there.